Born to Be a Motorcycle

Asthmatic Kitty; 2005

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Sufjan Stevens once said of pop music, "I don't think we're pushing ourselves enough." Of course, that was before UK six-piece The Go! Team stretched and smooshed up the pop song like so much Silly Putty for last year's Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Recent Stevens signees Bunky, with their own Saturday morning trumpets and laughable sobriquet, hopscotch conventions at a nearby playground.

When I was a child, I dreamed of being Joe Montana. This San Diego duo strive toward a Vice guestlist of rock ('n') role models: singer/drummer Emily Joyce's sultry vocals croon "Karen O."; her ambiguous relationship with singer/guitarist Rafter Roberts is a matching wardrobe shy of the White Stripes; their fuzzy, disjointed song structures were left off the Ark while trading pogs with the Unicorns. "Funny Like the Moon" jackhammers absurdist Magnetic Fields-cum-Chet Baker verses with garage-punk choruses, "Lipstick Life" sips absinthe in outer space with Air's Moon Safari, and even failure "Gotta Pee" manages to juxtapose fidgety indie rock with Wolf Eyes vacuum noise.

Such broad ambitions could be a lot to swallow, but Born to Be a Motorcycle is as playful as it is high-reaching. It's "Cute Not Beautiful", as the title to a surprisingly touching ballad explains. Amid the lo-fi simian squeaks of avant-garde love song "Boy/Girl", Roberts intones, "Girl, you know you look so pretty in that dinosaur outfit"-- a line the cool kids will soon be dropping on potential amours in place of "I caught you a delicious bass." On "Glass of Water", basic thirst becomes fodder for a screeching speakeasy sing-a-long. Even the album's most accessible track, sexily swaggering rocker "Chuy", keeps its tongue close to its cheek.

And, uh, the name's Bunky. (Apparently "Bunny" and "Monkey" were Joyce and Roberts' pet names for each other. Aww.) Members of other San Diego bands like Castanets, Rockets From the Crypt, Black Heart Procession, and Pinback also lend their support to the recording, but it's not clear they're needed. While Born to Be a Motorcycle falls just short of the masterpiece the group's core twosome likely intended, it pushes pop's boundaries enough to hope Bunky might slip its surly bonds by their sophomore outing. "The future's now," Joyce demands on burly opener "Baba", "so when the hell's the future?"